Masters of the Bibliographic Universe?

The Promises and Pitfalls of Digital Scholarship in the Age of Googlepedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe

Where we’re headed…

• Digital scholarship• Bibliographic

universe• Googlepedia• Demo of Zotero

etc.• The promises and

pitfalls

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe

For example…

• Claim: Bibliographic practices are being transformed through the convergence of specific socio-technical factors, e.g. ‘Googlepedia’

• Reason: Scholarship now takes place in print and digital media, but is increasingly disseminated through the Web. Therefore scholarly citation and hyperlinking are co-evolving practices/technologies…

• Evidence: Watch this space…

RDIFRadio FrequencyIdentification

The Evidence

David White, ‘Results and analysis of the Web 2.0 services survey undertaken by the SPIRE project’, JISC 2007.

http://spire.conted.ox.ac.uk/trac_images/spire/SPIRESurvey.pdf

“It is immediately clear that Wikipedia is very popular with usage ranging between 70 and 84 percent across all age groups. This is mainly individuals reading content rather than contributing, although the ratio of contribution to lurking across all collaborative authoring tools is 1 to 4. Around 50 percent of Wikipedia use is for study, which represents a huge amount of students and researchers who probably use Wikipedia as there first (and possibly only) source of reference.”

Ann M. Lally and Carolyn E. Dunford. ‘Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections’,

D-Lib Magazine, Volume 13, Number 5/6, May/June 2007

Figure: Wikipedia referrals to UW Libraries Digital Collections, October 2005 - September 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Willis_Sayre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Modelling_Wikipedia%27s_growth

Demo: Bibliography 1.0

Microsoft Word and Endnote

OPAC

WEB

Database

BibliographicSoftwaree.g. Endnote

Word-processor

Text file

Bib 1.0: the scholars perspective…

Desktoppublishing

z39.50

Demo: Bibliography 2.0

Firefox and Zotero

Worldcat

WikipediaZoter

oEndnote

GoogleDocs

Carmun

Google

Blogs/wiki

OpenOffice

Bib 2.0: the scholars perspective…

SRW/URSS

OpenURLOpenSearc

h

Libraries

Australia

Cohen, Daniel. 2007. History and Technology - Zotero: Social and Semantic Computing for Historical Scholarship. Perspectives: Newsletter of the American Historical Association. 45, no. 5: 13.Rosenzweig, Roy. 2006. Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. The Journal of American History 93, no. 1: 117.

Compatible standards and software for Zotero

• ContextObjects in Spans (COinS)http://ocoins.info/

• Embedded RDF• Dublin Core XML• MARC

• Voyager (WebVoyage)

• InnoPAC• SIRSI• Aleph• Dynix• VTLS• DRA• …

Standards Software

Conclusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe

Promises of Googlepedia

• Scholarly information any time and any where: ambient library made good…

• Complex knowledge organization: Semantic Web made good…

• Complex searches: FRBR made good…• Permanent: digital repositories made

good…

Pitfalls of Googlepedia

• Accuracy and reliability of Wikipedia an ongoing issue

• Googlepedia hyperlinks lack durability and persistence

• Information overload: trusted information filtering and recommendation services are needed

• Skills and knowledge gaps of students and academic staff

Bibliography 2.0, maybe…

• Scholarly communications is becoming dependent upon ‘free’ Bib 2.0 services offered by the big info utilities i.e. Google, Amazon.com, OCLC

• Growing gap between local campus-based Bib 1.0 and global Bib 2.0 practices